787, xi. 204, that
'there is in it that appearance of a labouring working mind, of an
indolent reposing body, which he had to a very great degree.'

[H-4] It seems almost certain that the portrait of Johnson in the Common
Room of University College, Oxford, is this very mezzotinto. It was
given to the College by Sir William Scott, and it is a mezzotinto from
Opie's portrait. It has been reproduced for this work, and will be found
facing page 244 of volume iii. Scott's inscription on the back of the
frame is given on page 245, note 3, of the same volume.

APPENDIX I.

(_Page_ 424.)

Boswell most likely never knew that in the year 1790 Mr. Seward, in the
name of Cadell the publisher, had asked Parr to write a _Life of
Johnson_. (Johnstone's _Life of Parr_, iv. 678.) Parr, in his amusing
vanity, was as proud of this _Life_ as if he had written it. '"It would
have been," he said, "the third most learned work that has ever yet
appeared. The most learned work ever published I consider Bentley _On
the Epistles of Phalaris_; the next Salmasius _On the Hellenistic
Language_." Alluding to Boswell's Life he continued, "Mine should have
been, not the droppings of his lips, but the history of his mind."'
Field's _Life of Parr_, i. 164.

In the epitaph that he first sent in were found the words 'Probabili
Poetae.'

'In arms,' wrote Parr, 'were all the Johnsonians: Malone, Steevens, Sir
W. Scott, Windham, and even Fox, all in arms. The epithet was cold. They
do not understand it, and I am a Scholar, not a Belles-Lettres man.'

Parr had wished to pass over all notice of Johnson's poetical character.
To this, Malone said, none of his friends of the Literary Club would
agree. He pointed out also that Parr had not noticed 'that part of
Johnson's genius, which placed him on higher ground than perhaps any
other quality that can be named--the universality of his knowledge, the
promptness of his mind in producing it on all occasions in conversation,
and the vivid eloquence with which he clothed his thoughts, however
suddenly called upon.' Parr, regardless of Johnson's rule that 'in
lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath' (_ante_, ii. 407),
replied, that if he mentioned his conversation he should have to mention
also his roughness in contradiction, &c. As for the epithet _probabili_,
he 'never reflected upon it without almost a triumphant feeling in its
felicity.' Nevertheless he would change it into 'poetae sententiarum